The Black Ops storyline continues, switching the past Cold War from the game's predecessor to future 2025, as a new Cold War between U.S.A. and China flares up due to the actions of one vengeful drug-runner.

I know there were people saying that everything was going to get worse for the series last year after Modern Warfare 3's launch (which people say every year and I have a feeling Brad Shoemaker was one of them), but this obviously proves that wrong. I wonder what the proportion of Wii U pre-orders compared to the other two versions are.

I'm more excited for Black Ops II than I was MW3, so I'm looking forward to when it launches on November 13th.

I'm pretty excited for Black Ops 2. I really wasn't feeling the multiplayer in MW3 (bad maps IMO) and eventually moved back to playing Black Ops. Treyarch appear to really have their shit together these days.

Not surprised at all considering the franchise, I expect the initial sales window to match or at least near MW3 numbers especially during launch when the marketing is in full effect. If the push is big enough, they could potentially pass MW3 but that'd be quite the milestone to strive for.

Call of Duty will not deliver a "bad game" at this point maybe dissapointing but not bad , there's just too much money put into that thing, they just need to keep adding stuff while delivering the same thing people want.

@FluxWaveZ: Firstly how dare you buy it. Secondly of course it does well, it's 90% of the industry by itself (also I'm reasonably sure MW3 did surpass Black Ops in total sales, counter to Brad's sentiment). I try to tell my brother to stop buying the same game over and over but he sure as hell doesn't listen, constant hype, advertisement, and "all my friends are doing it" bullshit outdoes logical advice sadly. Hell I've seen Dad's getting it for their 8 year old kids before (my brother is 30), just a huge range of different consumers that buy next to nothing for the rest of the year. Killing terrorists is a thing for all ages, easily the best recruitment tool for the army and special forces and generally the best way to indoctrinate children all around. Wouldn't be surprised if China picked it up to further reinforce their enormous standing armies with morale, Tibetans, Taiwanese, Terrorists, they all start with T.

There's some vague chance of a game challenging it on the next consoles, but that window is only going to be a few months at best, if it's not filled or seen as superior we're looking at another 5-6 years of Call of Duty craze. Fuck Activision, increasingly meh feelings toward Blizzard as well.

I know there were people saying that everything was going to get worse for the series last year after Modern Warfare 3's launch (which people say every year and I have a feeling Brad Shoemaker was one of them), but this obviously proves that wrong. I wonder what the proportion of Wii U pre-orders compared to the other two versions are.

I'm more excited for Black Ops II than I was MW3, so I'm looking forward to when it launches on November 13th.

I don't know about people saying it's going to get worse, but there has definitely been a lot said about how they keep rehashing the same themes and gameplay. So in that respect I guess it has been getting worse since CoD 4, the series peak as far as quality and innovation (in my opinion).

Now that a lot of my friends have moved into PC gaming it's been easy for me to forget that CoD is a "thing". It was mostly the console people that I know who always kept talking about those games. I'll remain indifferent to them like I have been since MW 2.

@FluxWaveZ: Huh? I... It's so obvious. Okay let's start with the basic question: Do you want to play almost nothing but military themed "modern combat" first and third person shooters for the entire next generation of consoles?

@FluxWaveZ: Huh? I... It's so obvious. Okay let's start with the basic question: Do you want to play almost nothing but military themed "modern combat" first and third person shooters for the entire next generation of consoles?

That's the worst... Dude, what are you even talking about? CoD being successful won't make that the only thing available in the market modern military shooters.

@FluxWaveZ: Look, the people that run the industry are businessmen first and foremost, if one genre outsells every other genre 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 that's what they're going to focus on, it's quite simple really (and I mean its really fucking obvious just look at 2011's major releases and sales figures). Since CoD does so well they can afford to spend more on it and this drives the price of production up even higher and high res assets are already absurdly expensive; at some point 1 million sales is no longer break even or profit and even more developers will go under. If you look at Yahtzee's reviews from last fall there are 7 shooters reviewed out of 9, 2.5 months of almost nothing but shooters; jokingly called "Shooter season 2011."

Japan is struggling mightily with everything that isn't Monster Hunter at present and may be phased out of the western market entirely within 10 years. Even their attempts at embracing our genre obsession hasn't led to much success; Vanquish despite being by far the best 3rd person shooter in terms of combat mechanics and challenge sold terribly, RE6 wasn't quite as successful on the design front and may break even but it already looks pretty grim. This podcast: http://radio.morningproject.com/ Has industry vets talking about Japanese gaming, one of the segments is titled "Japan is Fucked Watch" need I say more?

If you look at games that tried to redo the FPS formula in the past few years none of them were successful. Bulletstorm is much more interesting to play than Call of Duty or Killzone or what have you, but that didn't stop it from selling terribly. This means a coming dearth of creativity and variety in the industry, barring some miracle. FPS's are just going to get more iterative and dull than they already are and it looks like the best hope we've got is a company like Naughty Dog that has ridiculous amounts of resources thrown at them to do something creative; but that is definitely only a short term thing as they aren't really that profitable.

If consumers are stupid enough to buy the same iterative product over and over then the industry will adjust and make almost exclusively dull repetitive products; you'll get your 2 elder scrolls games (played from a first person perspective of course) over the life of the new consoles and you'll get 90% shooters aside from that, if not more really it could easily get worse than it already is. No new IPs, few JRPGs, handful of western RPGs, few fighting games; full retail releases are going to be terrible in the near future. Add in that near launch titles are almost always atrocious (N64 excluded) and you've got years of crap incoming, all thanks to our new Activision overlords.

I'm all for people enjoying whatever they want to enjoy... but fuck, you guys aren't sick of this yet? The mechanics are always the same and it feels so... repetitive. To be completely fair though, I got a lot of respect for Treyarch because they always try to do something new. But I just can't do it.

@FluxWaveZ: To some degree, yes. But at least 2D Mario games don't come out every year (pulling that out of my ass, wouldn't be surprised if that was wrong) and Mario games aren't hyped up to the level of CoD so I can kind of forget about them whenever they come out.

I'm more excited for this call of duty than I was MW3. I have faith in Treyarch after Blacks Ops. I also find it hilarious that people think that call of duty is ruining gaming. Call of duty has been huge for years now and we still get alot of unique interesting games every year.

I know right, every year, those guys in suits come to my door and take me away to the labor camps where I'm forced to play CoD for 20 hours a day and...and...the beatings....I cannot handle it anymore....

There's a direct inverse relationship that as COD has gotten more popular this past decade, western society has declined. The turning point came in laye 2007 with the release of modern warfare, which was not so incidentally the point at which the current world recession/depression started. Since then it's just gotten worse, as COD sales increase and those in jobs decrease. In its own way COD has propagated to the current economic and societal decline. Stop buying COD, lets get the economy healed.

@Fredchuckdave: I would have played Vanquish if it didn't have dumb anime. I would have played Bulletstorm if it didn't have dicktits. In other words, don't plaster a bunch of shit on top of an otherwise well-designed game.

@FluxWaveZ: Huh? I... It's so obvious. Okay let's start with the basic question: Do you want to play almost nothing but military themed "modern combat" first and third person shooters for the entire next generation of consoles?

You have a point. I'm sick of all these modern combat military shooters coming out like Dishonored and XCOM and Halo 4 and Hitman: Absolution and Assassins Creed 3 and Sleeping Dogs and Far Cry 3 and I think I've made my point.

@TheSouthernDandy: Halo 4 and CoD are going to combine to outsell every console game that came out in the last half of this year by 10 to 1 if not more. I understand if you're too thick to get the point, but the people who produce these games aren't, they're going to see those sales and they're going to say "Hey let's try to do that" not "Hey let's make a sequel to this other game that sold poor or mediocre." In fact they already have, but carry on; no need to think critically.

I myself had sworn off all COD/MW games after MW 3. ridiculous I bought that last game at full price. And I am not going to pre-order Black Ops 2

But Teyarch did prove them self to me with Black Ops 1, it felt fresh in mood and atmosphere. As for military shooters in general, I was never really wanted to be interested in them in the first place. COD 1 and 2, plus the expansions really surprised me though as good games. MW started off okay, MW 2 was still just okay...after that I was reminded of what I thought of Military shooters, Vietcong not withstanding. Something to do with reality.

Having said that, bet you I end up with a Black ops 2 PC copy after X-mas...

@Fredchuckdave: I'm well aware that popular franchises sell lots of units. That's why they're, ya know, popular. The part where this whole tin foil hat argument falls apart is the fact that these games have been selling huge numbers for YEARS. The Halo franchise is over 10 years old. CoD 4 came out five years ago. These are not new. The fact that these games make scads of cash is not new to anybody, I'm not sure why're you're suddenly shouting doom and gloom NOW. Yes, there's been a lot of shooters to come out this is true, but there's been a lot of imaginative interesting different games to come out that haven't been gritty grim modern military shooters. In face, that's a genre that's seeing a decline lately, gamers as a whole are starting to get tired of it.

There's always gonna be those franchises that sell big and yeah there will be other publishers who chase that cash but it doesn't mean every publisher and dev is gonna go STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING WE NEED TO DO WHAT THEY'RE DOING!!! Cause it would have happened already. You can continue to harangue people all you like and sound generally crazy. I'm just gonna play fun games thanks.

@FluxWaveZ: Huh? I... It's so obvious. Okay let's start with the basic question: Do you want to play almost nothing but military themed "modern combat" first and third person shooters for the entire next generation of consoles?

Yeah because that is all we are playing now. The only ones I can think of are COD, BF3 and MOH. Noone even tries putting out mediocre "Modern Shooters" because noone is going to buy a bad one. COD is a great series, I enjoy the campaigns and really enjoyed the Black Ops MP, aslong as they put out good games they deserve all the sales they get.

I'm more excited for this call of duty than I was MW3. I have faith in Treyarch after Blacks Ops. I also find it hilarious that people think that call of duty is ruining gaming. Call of duty has been huge for years now and we still get alot of unique interesting games every year.

Its' probably doing the opposite. I know many people that brought 360's just for COD4 and never liked gaming before. Then they starting playing Fallout 3, GTA IV, Red Dead Redemption, Mirrors Edge, Dead Space, Skyrim and all the popular arcade stuff like trials its kind of a gateway drug into gaming kind of like Final Fantasy 7 was for me.

@Fredchuckdave : Your logic doesn't make sense to me. People by annual sports games each year and they sell quite well. People also buy annual shooter games each year and they sell quite well. Clearly the market supports both of these different types of games. You are suggesting that I shouldn't purchase a game that I enjoy because I'm going to ruin the future market of games for YOU.

FPS games will run their course...when they run their course. Not when people artificially decide to stop purchasing them in some form of solidarity meant to change the industry.

@FluxWaveZ: Look, the people that run the industry are businessmen first and foremost, if one genre outsells every other genre 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 that's what they're going to focus on, it's quite simple really (and I mean its really fucking obvious just look at 2011's major releases and sales figures). Since CoD does so well they can afford to spend more on it and this drives the price of production up even higher and high res assets are already absurdly expensive; at some point 1 million sales is no longer break even or profit and even more developers will go under. If you look at Yahtzee's reviews from last fall there are 7 shooters reviewed out of 9, 2.5 months of almost nothing but shooters; jokingly called "Shooter season 2011."

Japan is struggling mightily with everything that isn't Monster Hunter at present and may be phased out of the western market entirely within 10 years. Even their attempts at embracing our genre obsession hasn't led to much success; Vanquish despite being by far the best 3rd person shooter in terms of combat mechanics and challenge sold terribly, RE6 wasn't quite as successful on the design front and may break even but it already looks pretty grim. This podcast: http://radio.morningproject.com/ Has industry vets talking about Japanese gaming, one of the segments is titled "Japan is Fucked Watch" need I say more?

If you look at games that tried to redo the FPS formula in the past few years none of them were successful. Bulletstorm is much more interesting to play than Call of Duty or Killzone or what have you, but that didn't stop it from selling terribly. This means a coming dearth of creativity and variety in the industry, barring some miracle. FPS's are just going to get more iterative and dull than they already are and it looks like the best hope we've got is a company like Naughty Dog that has ridiculous amounts of resources thrown at them to do something creative; but that is definitely only a short term thing as they aren't really that profitable.

If consumers are stupid enough to buy the same iterative product over and over then the industry will adjust and make almost exclusively dull repetitive products; you'll get your 2 elder scrolls games (played from a first person perspective of course) over the life of the new consoles and you'll get 90% shooters aside from that, if not more really it could easily get worse than it already is. No new IPs, few JRPGs, handful of western RPGs, few fighting games; full retail releases are going to be terrible in the near future. Add in that near launch titles are almost always atrocious (N64 excluded) and you've got years of crap incoming, all thanks to our new Activision overlords.

I want to believe you're kidding. I know you're not, but I really, really want to believe you're just trolling.

It's fun. I buy dozens of other games every year, and I bashed Modern Warfare 3 a fair bit for being pretty bland compared to Black Ops, but overall the CoD games are just plain fun. Stupid as hell, yes, but fun nonetheless. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I'm not stupid for enjoying it.

If consumers are stupid enough to buy the same iterative product over and over...

few JRPGs, few fighting games

You honestly believe that JRPGs and FIGHTING GAMES of all things are not the same iterative product over and over? Those are your examples? I can see JRPGs to a point, but I would say that COD sequels are objectively less iterative than fighting games.

Next to sports games, fighting game sequels are frequently about as iterative as you can get, but I doubt that you have any posts complaining about Tekken 6 or NBA 2K13 in their respective forums, do you?

@Fredchuckdave you need to fucking stop rambling now, dude. You're not proving anything other than the fact that you're either trolling or an enormous dick.

It's not because pop stars make the same record every two years that good bands can't find an audience. The Transformers franchise hasn't stopped smaller, more artful and thoughtful films from coming out. Firaxis isn't going to fucking start making modern military shooters next gen.

Let people enjoy the things they like. I'm going to have a blast playing online splitscreen Black ops 2 with my girlfriend, attending the midnight launch and everything, and we're not going to murder the games industry by doing so - contrary to what you so zealously believe.

Most importantly, just stop. Stop. No one sane is on your side in this matter.